Nobel Physics Prize: Three scientists share honour for their achievements in quantum mechanics
- Nobel Physics Prize winner announced day after Swedish scientist was awarded the Medicine Prize
- Launched 121 years ago, the Nobel Prize awards were created by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel
The Nobel Physics Prize was on Tuesday awarded to Alain Aspect of France, John Clauser of the United States and Austria’s Anton Zeilinger for discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics.
The trio won the prize for their advances in quantum mechanics on the behaviour of subatomic particles, opening the door to work on super computers and encrypted communication.
The awards were given for “experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”, the award-giving body said on Tuesday.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the laureates – Aspect is French, Clauser American and Zeilinger Austrian – enabled further fundamental research and also potentially cleared the way for new practical technology.
“There is now a large field of research that includes quantum computers, quantum networks and secure quantum encrypted communication,” it said in a statement.
“Quantum information science is a vibrant and rapidly developing field”, said Eva Olsson, a member of the Nobel committee. “It has broad and potential implications in areas such as secure information transfer, quantum computing and sensing technology”.